Imagery of "ships" and "boats" has always had significant meaning in Cai Guo-Qiang's work. Cai's birthplace, Quanzhou, was the site at which Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) once built and launched the largest ship in the world, and was also the starting point of the maritime Silk Road to Southeast Asia. In 1994, Cai accomplished one of his most important works in Iwaki, Japan "Returning the Light: From the Pan-Pacific" He transformed the exhibition hall space into a scene from the Pacific Ocean with a shipwreck and glinting sea salt to reflect the history of Iwaki.

The following year, at the 46th Venice Biennale, Cai's "Bringing to Venice What Marco Polo Forgot" shipped assorted drinks soaked in Chinese medicine from Quanzhou to the Port of Venice by tracing the original route through which the West first ‘discovered' the East over 700 years ago. The symbolic use of ships has continued to appear in Cai's works ever since. To him, ships represent not only his hometown, but also foreign lands. Cai has also described himself as a small ship floating and oscillating between various cultures. The only constant, however, is that this particular ship comes from Quanzhou.

"Boat" is one of Cai's creations associated with the imagery of a ship. The two ships are derived from the same entity, reflecting Cai's poetic reminiscence of his hometown between the virtual and the real.

(Excerpted from Cai Guo Qiang!, written by Cai Guo-Qiang, Leslie Ma, and Chin Yachun, edited by Chin Yachun, published by Eslite Corporation, December, 2009.)